In fact, the most dangerous long-term enemy of mule deer and hunting
throughout the West is a growing and increasingly consumptive and
nature-ignorant human population, causing habitat loss, degradation and
splintering.

December 28, 2012

Law professor and blogger Glen Reynolds often talks about the "bubble" in legal education—new law schools opening, older ones expanding, even as few graduates find jobs in their field but leave school with their JD and a huge load of debt.

The vet clinic that we use most is basically a father-and-son (and for a time, daughter) operation — plus a revolving cast of new Colorado State University graduates, especially on the small-animal side.

You go and meet with "Dr. Susie" or "Dr. Kevin," and on the next visit, it's someone else.

December 24, 2012

In modern culture, hunting has been dominated by a stereotype of burly men in camouflage who view the pastime mostly as a sport. [Speak for yourself, Jacki Lyden. My friends and I were writing hunting-related poetry and essays in our twenties.]

McCaulau takes a state-sponsored Becoming an Outdoors Women workshop in Oregon, including a pheasant hunt, of which she says,

And there was one other woman who hadn't shot a bird. So the two of us
went up kind of close to where the dog was holding the bird, and when
the bird flushed, it flew up in the air. We both took a shot and killed
the bird. And I was really shocked by my reaction because I was
expecting to just be wracked with guilt and really confused about what
had just happened. And instead, I was euphoric. I couldn't believe that I
had it in me and that I'd done it. I felt empowered and proud and
amazed and relieved.

The expansion of hunting into liberal, urban circles is the latest
development in an evolving and increasingly snug coexistence between
humans and beasts in North America. Jim Sterba’s new book, Nature Wars,
examines the paradox of the rebound of many wild species, particularly
in the densely populated East Coast of the United States. Whitetail
deer, turkeys, Canada geese, black bears, and trees are all doing
wonderfully in 2012, thanks to conservation measures in the past and
vagaries of history and cultural change. The problem, Sterba says, is
that most modern North Americans have no idea what to do with these
species. We gawk and gape; we feed them doughnuts; we run into them with
our cars; we are surprised and alarmed by their messy habits and
occasional aggressiveness; we manage them all wrong; we want them gone
from our neighborhoods, but we abhor the idea of killing them.

(Let's see . . . Beard? Check. Bicyle-riding (well, sometimes)? Check. Locavore? Check. I had no idea that I was so much in tune with the zeitgeist — or maybe the zeitgeist is now in tune with me?)

December 23, 2012

I am not sure how you measure creativity — it's not like saying how many pull-ups you can do or something like that, but if being outdoors enhanced creativity, then I will support the meme.

Earlier studies have shown that children
spend only 15 to 25 minutes outdoors daily and that outdoor recreation
has declined over the past 30 years. People ages 8 to 18 spent more than
7.5 hours daily watching TV or using cellphones or computers.

But I always feel a little guilty about now in writing such a blog post, because guess where I am at this very moment. OK, tomorrow, serious hike. It's supposed to snow too.

December 21, 2012

The conversation wandered around "secret" hiking trails, local water issues, and of course critter tales — specifically mountain lions.

Back when M. and I were hired by the Bureau of Land Management to census Mexican spotted owls, we were stalked by mountain lions twice that we knew of, and probably other times that we did not know of.

But these people hand-raised them. They had two lions that lived out their lives with them, because the cats had been seized from people who owned them illegally and who had had them declawed. There was no way that these cats could be released into the wild.

The lions were quite friendly, almost cuddly. But they were still cats — unpredictable.

One day one of them jumped the woman as she was leaving its pen, knocked her down, and bit into the back of her head. It sounded like a dog chewing a bone, she said.

Her husband got the cat off of her with a couple of swift kicks to the head and a squirt of pepper spray. She was half-scalped. It was a real La Brea Tar Pits moment, he says.

He himself was in a bad car wreck once and was rebuilt with pins and plates, so we figured that their skeletons would astonish archaeologists of the future.

"Look," they might say, "people in the Plastic Age were still preyed on by large carnivores. Yet this woman survived — her people took care of her."

"And the man — clearly he had many enemies, but someone rebuilt his skeleton in a primitive way."

After reading the article in yesterday’s Colorado Springs Independent, I am left stunned. Regarding the management of the fire within the city of Colorado Springs, I have never heard of a wildland fire with such a huge impact that was so utterly, catastrophically mismanaged.

One of my son’s favorite book series this year is the “I Survived…”
9/11 attacks, Titanic, San Fran Earthquake (from Scholastic Books). At
first, I was concerned of his interest in disasters but after reading a
few of the pages, I understood why he enjoyed them. He wanted to find
out what kids did to survive and not be victims.

Recently, I learned that they had not used it through the winter. Ungrateful bears! What do they think they are, wild animals?

Meanwhile, the rehabbers had two bears to care for this past summer. One was found in the spring, weighing only 12 pounds — yet he was a yearling! How had he survived the winter? A normal weight for a yearling black bear at that stage of life would be 40–50 pounds.

The other was a cub brought in after its mother and sibling were hit by a car.

Both gained a lot of weight over the summer. As our friends reported,

Walmart once again provided tons of bear necessities. The bears gorged on peaches, plums, avocados, grapes, dry dog food (their least favorite), apples and assorted other fruits and vegetables that came with the bear packages. I also gave them as many natural foods as I could harvest. Chokecherry, juniper berries, wild plums and acorns were added to their diet.

This time they were just turned loose into the forest to find their own dens.

But that model, the "Bly," was not on display. The saleswoman fetched a printed catalog, and M. found the shoe, somewhat redesigned but now apparently discontinued, or at least that was the story.

Still, the saleswoman praised them: "Half the women who work here bought those shoes." Or else she was shrewdly praising M's judgment, a little ego-boost for the customer — whatever.

Then she did something that surprised us. She went to a computer, looked up the shoe, and found that Sierra Trading Post, a Wyoming-based chain that sells a lot of discontinued and closed-out outdoor gear and clothing, still had them. I had my laptop computer with me, so I went down Tejon Street to Rico's wine bar, ordered a glass of something, and dropped the shoes into my virtual shopping cart, at 40 percent off the original price.

So to give credit where it is due, she did not make a sale, but she left us with warm, fuzzy feelings about Mountain Chalet, and when M. wears out these shoes in a year or two, we will probably look there first again. When you have a brick-and-mortar (literally!) specialty store, you have to do these things.

Torrance County sheriff's officials say they have had a flood of new calls since news of Swenerton's arrest broke. One woman, approached at a hamburger stand, seemed startled to hear of the case.

"My dog is missing. A lot of dogs are missing," Melissa Crozier said. She said her dog, Simba, recently disappeared from inside her home, behind an unlocked door. "I came home and he was gone. I have no idea how he could have gotten out" unless someone opened the door.